ABSTRACT
The concept of distributed cognition (DC) figures prominently in contemporary discussions of the idea that the social, cultural, and technological distribution of cognitive labor in groups can give rise to "group cognition" or "collective intelligence." Since there are different ways of understanding the notion of DC, there is much debate about what "ontological heft" we should attach to the thesis that groups are distributed cognitive systems. The formulation of a unified framework for analyzing the complex interactions among the shared, distributive, and joint aspects of socially distributed cognitive systems remains a distant goal. The literature on socially distributed cognition (SDC) has focused mostly on the non-summative aspects of compensatory and complementary task distributions when cognitive tasks are performed at the group level. The chapter discusses various dimensions and aspects of SDC, and how it can give rise to emergent group level properties.
